A Falling Bird
by Ramzes
Summary: The Broken King was not the only one plagued by the memories of his childhood. Others were simply better at hiding it. A companion piece to Wane of Glory.


A Falling Bird

"How is she?"

For once, Aegon didn't spat a vicious reply. Instead, he hitched a shoulder and looked back at the chamber he had just left, the chamber where his sister-wife was trying to compose herself, if not for herself then for the child who had already started giving her trouble. Naerys had lost her fragile grace. Now, she was all belly.

"She's trying to sleep. She'll be fine."

He didn't sound convinced, though. Why should he? Would any of them be all right? At this moment, the news of the death of the last dragon was spreading through King's Landing like a great fire. They both looked at the sky but any traces of the first and last flight of the pitiful majestic creature were gone. How she had fallen from the sky, heavy and graceful yet, and lovely as a bird… If birds could crack stones at their fall, that was it.

"What are we going to do now, Aemon?"

Aegon sounded scared as he should. What would they do without the power of dragons? It was true that they hadn't had the power _of_ dragons for a very long time but she sheer possession of the beasts was a power. This night had dealt a huge blow to the dragon kings – were they still kings without dragons?

"The best that we could," Aemon finally said. "What are you going to do tonight?"

"Getting drunk," Aegon replied immediately. "I'll do my best to forget what I've just witnessed. Care to join me?"

They were sure to end the night in a quarrel if not a fight and yet Aemon was inclined to accept. Everything was preferable to being alone but he shook his head. "I – I have to check whether everyone else is fine."

"Aemon the Blessed," Aegon tried to mock but he couldn't quite manage the tone. The death of the she-dragon had shaken him as bad as the rest of them. "Good luck."

Aemon reminded himself that he was a Kingsguard now. He had no right to talk back_... But you're off duty right now_, a soft voice purred in his head. He drowned it mercilessly.

His first destination should be the royal bedchamber. But the King was guarded by two of Aemon's sworn brothers and anyway, he had left with the Queen. Only a madman would dare intrude upon them at night without a very good reason.

Aemon's father, on the other hand, had acted rather oddly. Viserys Targaryen had survived the Dance of the Dragons, his captivity in Essos, the Regents, his wife's desertion – all of that while keeping his wits about him. Tonight, Aemon had been stunned to see his father's horror displayed so profoundly. He had always thought that nothing short of the Doom of Valyria could shake Viserys' famed self-control.

He wouldn't enter, of course. Ever since he was a child, he had been acutely aware of the distance between his father and them. Even now, their relationship wasn't such that he'd appear in Viserys' chambers uninvited. And his father was sure to get furious if Aemon did as much as hint that he had glimpsed anything resembling a moment of weakness about him. As much as he disliked it, Aemon had to admit that Viserys had always been the one person who had been able to scare him to death with his rage, cold as ice or worse, his indifference, his carefully maintained distance.

Just having a look from behind the hangings of the door, on the other hand… Just making sure that his father was fine. He would be out before Viserys even realized he had been there.

But the scene he saw from behind the hangings of a side door stopped him dead in his tracks. His father in a great chair near the fireplace. His aunt Rhaena curled on the floor, her head against the arm of Viserys' chair. They were both close to the flames turning the room unbearably hot in the midst of summer. Viserys' hand was moving slowly over Rhaena's hair in a gesture that was… soothing? It looked so. Soothing to both of them. Aemon was stunned.

"Was it like that when your hatchling died, at Dragonstone?" Viserys asked wearily, and Rhaena shook her head, holding his hand to her cheek.

"It was devastating because I was a child and that was the first great loss in my life… I don't remember losing my mother, you know. And children can feel so… differently. It never occurred to me that he might not become a great dragon carrying me through the skies. Especially when Baela already had Moondancer. I was so sure that I'd never know such pain again." There was bitterness in Rhaena's voice, anger and mocking at a young girl's naivete.

Viserys lifted his hand and Aemon saw Rhaena reaching for it once again. His father patted her cheek. "I'm here," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

For a moment, she leaned her cheek against his palm and Viserys wasn't quick to withdraw it. Aemon could feel his father's affection, his patience for Rhaena's weakness. Viserys had never been so considerate about such moments in his own children. Anger and bitterness choked Aemon like a vice.

Viserys poured two goblets of wine and handed one of them to his sister. Before Aemon's disbelieving eyes, Rhaena downed half of it in a single gulp.

Viserys smiled a little. "I don't think I've seen you like this since the night you, Baela, Jace, and Luke decided to find out what being drunk felt like," he said. But his voice was as sad as his smile. He drank deeply.

"You saw him fall, didn't you?" Rhaena asked all of a sudden. "You saw him die."

What was she talking about? Before Aemon could find the answer, his father provided it. "It was true, what they say. Vermax flew too low. I had broken free and standing on the stern. I was so hopeful, so sure… They didn't dare to stop me, you know, just in case we won. No one wanted to get on Jace's – and Vermax's – bad side. And then he fell."

Silence descended upon the room. Aemon wondered why no one had told him – but it looked like no one had told Rhaena either. She had worked it out by herself. The flames cracked and cast odd shadows on their both pale, gaunt faces, bringing to light the pain that Aemon had occasionally witnessed in his childhood, the pain he knew he should never talk about.

"Is it true?" Rhaena finally asked. "That he didn't die immediately? That they… shot him multiple times before…"

"All is true," Viserys said and in his voice, the entire weariness of the world echoed. "All of it."

Rhaena set the goblet aside and held out a hand. Without hesitation, Viserys followed her lead and lowered himself on the floor, leaning his back against the chair. Rhaena took his hand.

"How did you know?" he asked. "The gods know I didn't tell anyone."

"I just did," she sighed. "You didn't even tell Larra?"

Aemon's breath caught. His mother's name was something that was never spoken where Viserys could hear it. Actually, it was something that was only a shiver of rumours, a quick look away, a stuttering eagerness to change the topic wherever one of the children was nearby. Had Viserys chased Larra away? Had he been cold and distant to her, driven her away with his indifference? She had been much older – had he felt saddled with someone who was not for him?

Viserys laughed bitterly. "Do you imagine that I did?" he asked. "I was so terrified of doing anything that would make her perceive me as a scared little boy. Can you imagine me babbling about that? She was firm that I could only go on if I forgot the past. And I wouldn't do anything to contradict her. Wouldn't want to think me weaker than my age deemed me, you see? And I wouldn't tell her if I could. It was bad enough that it haunted me in my dreams. I didn't want it in my waking hours as well!"

"Larra was a…" Rhaena started and then checked herself. "I never liked the woman anyway. Since the moment you brought her over."

Somehow, that seemed to amuse Viserys. "I thought you didn't," he murmured. "I thought it, I swear. And then I thought I was going mad because you were always so polite."

Aemon wondered whether his aunt was being entirely truthful. Her hatred for Larra might have well come later. No one who had caused Viserys pain, however inadvertently, could hope to stay in Rhaena's good graces.

Merriness went away as swiftly as it had come. "Don't tell Aegon," he said. "He believes I was confined downstairs all the time and I didn't see anything. I wouldn't dissuade him. We don't want him to start wallowing in guilt over leaving me once again."

"Don't tell Baela either. It'll only serve to upset her. She put so much effort into leaving it behind."

The two of them looked at each other and in Rhaena's face, Aemon saw the aching tenderness he remembered from his childhood when he had been ill.

"Tell me, Viserys. I would like to hear it."

His voice was so low that Aemon could not hear the words but the changing expressions on both their faces told him that Viserys indeed was relaying the horror that had changed the history of Westeros. Their fate. All of a sudden, Aemon realized how young both Viserys and Rhaena were still. When the dragons had been dancing, they had been only children. How had they survived and put it all behind them? Had they ever truly succeeded in putting it behind? The wave of sympathy was overwhelming.

Rhaena took Viserys' hands in her own and murmured something. He nodded and leaned his head against her shoulder. She smoothed his hair, probably just like she had done when he had been a babe who had clashed into a chest and crying out in pain.

"A falling bird," Viserys said finally, as a clear continuation of a former phrase that Aemon had not heard. Rhaena sighed, holding him close, and Aemon finally realized why his father had always turned his face away at the sight of a bird falling from the sky.


End file.
